This is the first day of the last month of the year 2013. Several notable events will be going
on in the heavens this month.

The December moon is called the cold moon, and it will be full on the 17th.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac says that Venus continues to climb higher in the west and will
brighten to its most-dazzling brilliance of the year. Venus is the second-brightest object in the
night sky.

Perhaps this month it will remind us of the Star of Bethlehem.

The third thing that will be happening in the heavens this month is the winter solstice, which
will occur at 2:11 p.m. on the 21st.

Nowadays, we hardly acknowledge the winter solstice, except that maybe it makes us feel good to
know that the days will be getting longer once again.

It hasn’t always been that way. For the ancient inhabitants of what is now Ohio, the solstice
was an event of great mystery and wonder. It was a time for religious ceremonies because the
ancients knew that the sun had ended its journey away and was turning around and headed back toward
them.

They fully understood what was happening, even if they didn’t know why. They built mounds and
other earthen mechanisms that marked when the winter solstice would happen, and they celebrated
when it did.

Bradley Lepper, the curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society, said that Ohio had
multiple earthworks marking the winter solstice. He addressed two of the major ones.

In Marietta, two parallel earthen walls were known as the “sacra via” by white settlers. That
name, which means “sacred road,” stuck, and it is still called that today.

The walls lead to the Muskingum River and mark the winter-solstice sunset.

Lepper also mentioned the high-bank work (not the high banks) in Ross County. It involves a
circle connected to an octagon and has alignment with the winter-solstice sunrise and sunset.

Both earthworks were built by the Hopewell culture (100 B.C. to A.D. 400.)

“These alignments record interest the ancient Ohioans felt for the seasonal shifts,” Lepper
said. “But I don’t think the earthworks were merely calendars. I think aligning these great
earthworks to the cosmic rhythms was a way for making them more sacred.

“The winter-solstice shift must have reassured them that the sun would return, and there would
be a spring and a summer.”

To tell you the truth, I feel much the same way as my ancient predecessors did.